Over the past few years alkalizing has become more of a well known term, especially to those following natural health and healthy diets. Alkalizing your body is really quite simple and can be done by making a few changes to your diet.
The chart above shows the pH scale of foods that are highly alkalizing, those that are near neutral, and those that are acidic (opposite of alkalizing).
The body has a normal pH level at 7.35 to 7.45 and when the acidity is high, it results to sickness and diseases. You will notice that people who have high acidity levels also have dry skin and develop colds and flu symptoms often. High acidity is caused by factors such as eating acidic foods like processed foods and meat, stressful environments and lack of oxygen.
The best way to support a healthy acidic-alkaline balance within the body is to consume diet that is composed of 50% to 80% alkaline foods. Limiting acidic foods to less than half of one’s diet will improve acid-alkaline balance.
Top 6 Secrets To Alkalizing The Body For Radiant Health
1. Eat a large green salad tossed in lemon juice and olive oil. Greens are among the best sources of alkaline minerals, like calcium. Make a huge salad every 3 days and keep it in your fridge to make it very easy to alkalize your body. Some greens that have the highest water content are: cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, celery, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, carrots, and onions.
A great dressing would be cold pressed extra virgin olive oil with some lemon juice. Keep this in a bowl in your fridge (tip: add cucumbers and tomatoes right before eating). Eat a HUGE salad before or with every meal!
2. Drink Pure Water – Pure water meaning water that is filtered, distilled water or reverse osmosis. Alkaline water has a pH over 7.5 and has added oxygen to help neutralize acids. A simple way to alkalize your water is with a dash of baking soda. There are also wonderful alkalizing agents you can purchase to buffer and alkalize the water.
TIP: Drink a minumum of 7 ounces of water for every 10 lbs of your body weight. If you weigh 130lbs, you need to drink a minimum of 91 ounces of pure water (that’s about 3 liters).
Avoid: Coffee, black tea and sodas – These drinks are highly acidic and DO NOT count towards your daily water intake.
3. Eat a grapefruit in the AM. Grapefruit, similar to lemons, are alkalizing and some people believe it to be a miracle fruit. Eat one first thing in the morning, and wait fifteen minutes before eating a carbohydrate or protein giving your system time to digest.
TIP: Eat a grapefruit first thing in the morning.
4. Avoid artificial sweeteners – NutraSweet, Sucralose, Aspartame, Saccharin are these acidic they also have other highly detrimental effects on the nervous system and neurological disease. Saccharin even tells you right on the package that it may cause cancer.
TIP: A natural sugar substitute that has had no reported side effects is Stevia.
5. Reduce stress daily by adding yoga, tai chi, meditation, and proper breathing. An additional factor that adds to acidosis (acidic bodies) is stress. When the body moves into stress mode the digestive system shuts down and toxins cease to be eliminated.
Thus the more toxins you keep in your system, the more the body will store them away (acids) in fat cells! Anything we can do to calm the mind/body will have a huge impact on alkalizing the body.
6. Eliminate red meat, pork, lamb consumption. Substitute chicken, turkey or fresh fish in small quantities. Red meats, pork and lamb are highly acidic a very low water content, not to mention being hard on the digestive system.
TIP: If you must have meat protein, opt for chicken or turkey or wild fresh fish.
In Summary: If you will start out by going down the list of tips and add one secret each day, theres a tremendous possibility that you will be amazed with what you experience. Simply increasing the amount and type of water you drink can and often will be a HUGE shift in how you feel.